TRENTON — The city will have to wait longer for a Superior Court judge to issue guidance on its faltering election process, as an application to the court late last week has been returned with a request for changes.

The city needs the judge to approve the use of fewer petition signatures per candidate than the law requires because candidates for the May 13 Trenton election were mistakenly told to gather too few signatures.

The city’s law department attempted to file a request for intervention with a state judge late last week, but it was sent right back.

“They received some instructions and they are tweaking it, changing the language and will refile it,” said Rudolph Palombi Jr., a Hamilton-based attorney representing mayoral candidate Paul Perez.

He said he had a conversation about the issue with the city’s law director, Caryl Amana, who is revising the filing to the court.

“She made her best efforts to file something on Friday,” Palombi said today.

Candidate Walker Worthy also confirmed the filing in a statement today.

Last week Amana had intended to ask Mercer County Superior Court Assignment Judge Mary Jacobson to consider allowing the city to continue with the election as planned, even though a misinterpretation of state law led to candidates for mayor and council being told to submit an insufficient number of signatures.

As a result, some candidates do not have enough signatures and would not qualify to run for election if the city is forced to comply with the law.

To get around the problem, the city has asked candidates to sign a release saying they support moving forward with the election as scheduled and agree not to challenge the election outcome based on the signature issue.

Palombi said he is unaware why the judge returned the documents that were filed on Friday, but said the documents were filed as “emergent,” meaning they require immediate action.

Palombi said with emergent applications, the court reviews the documents to determine if they truly require immediate action.

Amana did not respond to a call today. Mayor George Muschal did not respond to messages left for him today.

A spokesman for the state courts said the city had not refiled the documentation with Jacobson late this afternoon.

Yesterday the city clerk continued with the election process despite the mix-up by holding a drawing for candidates to determine their place on the ballot.

Mayoral candidate Jim Golden said although the matter has still not gone before the judge, he believes the election will continue as scheduled.

“I had no problem with us going forward with the exercise,” Golden said.

Palombi said he was concerned to see that the clerk made the decision to continue with the drawing despite the uncertainty.

“If your office or the clerk continues further down the current road with the election process, without having legal clarification which candidates, if any, have satisfied the statutory criteria to appear on the official ballot, it will only further cloud an admittedly flawed process,” Palombi said in a letter to Amana.